Salon Urge | From ballet to B&D and S/M?

T H E_.H O T_.S P O T
Erotic wasteland
By Susie Bright
With bad sex at home and pseudosex on TV, America is one frustrated nation
(03/05/99)

R E C E N T L Y
Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson
By Gentry Lane
Why is it taboo for women to date younger men?
(03/25/99)
Will the real Jeff Stryker please rise?
By Jeff Stryker
Jeff Stryker on Jeff Stryker: My doppelganger is a sex god
(03/18/99)
Enchanted forest
By Reed Hearne
A man takes us behind the tropical bushes into the land of gay cruising, where two worlds coexist without ever touching
(03/11/99)
Rub me tender
By Jon Bowen
A reformed frotteurist explores the roots of his long-lost fetish
(03/04/99)
Doctor's orders
By Janelle Brown
In the wake of a new Alabama law declaring vibrators illegal, a provocative new book, "The Technology of Orgasm," sheds light on the perversely puritanical evolution of the feminine joystick
(02/25/99)

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FROM BALLET TO B&D AND S/M? | PAGE 1, 2
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Zimroth, a National Jewish Book Award winner and poet, writes of that time in a young dancer's life when careers are made or broken. Subtitled "Memoir of a Young Girl and Her Ballet Master," the book begins with a disturbing vignette. Zimroth, in her adult life, was raped by a boyfriend (her first sexual experience). But a few pages later she changes course. It wasn't rape after all. "Did it hurt?" the boyfriend asked afterwards. "Yes," she answered. "Do you want it again?" he persisted. "Yes," she answered again. And apparently she remains convinced that she did want it, and that the experience was an allegory for her ballet training. If that's not enough to get your attention: She's not complaining. In fact, she considers the memoir an "elegy" to her ballet teacher, the man she refers to only as "F."
Zimroth is on to something -- sensational yet obvious. The training of a serious dancer involves ceding control, being touched whether you like it or not, being seen whether you like it or not. "Junk off," our teachers would say, and that meant "strip, now." We would remove the plastic shorts and ripped T-shirts and leg warmers that served more as a protective shield than a way of getting warm and be exposed. Down to regulation pink and black, unforgiving, and after age 13 unflattering for most. I'd play with the skin on my neck between combinations because there was nothing else to fidget with. The only saving grace was not being a student at the studio across town, where weights went up on a chart on the wall each week, and you didn't perform the role if you didn't fit in the costume.
It also meant wanting to be hurt. Misshapen and untalented dancers are simply ignored. So 13-year-old girls learn to take it as a compliment when the teacher, often male, grabs her leg and pushes it up to her ear, makes her repeat the combination until her muscles shake with exhaustion, pinches her arm so she remembers to hold it up, smacks the bottom of her heels so that they stay elevated. While we were corrected, we were to be passive, stare straight ahead and finish the combination, and allow our bodies to be "placed." At the basis of it all -- trust, devotion and passion, or so we were told. Sound familiar?
Zimroth is brave in telling this story -- of how a value system that is stigmatized and labeled perverse in the outside world when enacted between two consenting adults is not only treated as normal but celebrated in the dance studio when the relationship occurs between a 13-year-old and a teacher who is three times her age. For Zimroth, there is a natural climax to the secret pact between teacher and student, the story that began this piece.
But this vignette, F's order to strip naked and the deflowering that ensues, is actually the beginning of a three-page fantasy, events that would have taken place "if this were fiction." The imaginary encounter in her teacher's "secret" room is the closest we get to a physical consummation of her "collusion."
Zimroth must resort to such fantasies, because her love affair is never really with F but with the ballet itself, and that's where the difference between her love and those in S/M relationships begins. In fact, F does not exist for Zimroth outside of his power to make her a dancer: "It never occurred to me to endow him with a life outside the studio and his secret room -- that is, a life away from me."
It is ballet -- not F himself -- that transmits the values of domination and submission. She observes, "Ballet is a world in which 'normal' values are reversed: brutality is seen as a gift, fear as devotion, sadism as love." Zimroth acknowledges that her story is not unique. And while she qualifies her claims in her introduction by pleading with her children to understand that she writes only of the hothouse world of ballet, "not a paradigm for living," she simultaneously emphasizes that any female dancer "would immediately comprehend the nature of my relationship to F and could substitute her own F." In the end, she endorses balletic B&D-S/M with the admission of her own complicity: "Children can collude. I colluded. I loved him."
Those who defend S/M relationships outside the dance world do so by appealing to the value of sexual freedom: They argue that consensual expressions of sexuality should not be limited to vanilla heterosexuality. But a necessary precondition for such exploration is the existence of options -- the option to submit or to dominate, the option to trade in an abusive or simply unhappy relationship for something better. In this context, the possibility for collusion exists (though whether or not it can exist for a 9- or 13-year-old is another issue entirely).
In the dance world as Zimroth describes it, the choices are to love according to the rules or not to love at all. In such circumstances one must question whether collusion is possible, if the idea of collusion is more than a rationalization for mistreatment.
Even Zimroth's portrayal of her own consent falters sometimes. F at one point punishes her for taking up smoking by ritualistically and deliberately striking her three times with a cane. Fair enough, argues Zimroth. "Daring begets pain; that was the deal. It was worth it." She relished that the ordeal was "private and forbidden, more secret and taboo than my childish attempt to smoke." But when F unexpectedly and ferociously strikes her a fourth time on her way out the door she feels betrayed. "THAT was not part of the bargain, not part of the deal, not part of the reciprocity of elegance and pain we had so perfectly enacted. It was entirely unfair, uncalled for and very, very painful."
In this one moment in the book, Zimroth acknowledges the blurry line between collusion and abuse, and her lack of power to negotiate that line. But without such power to negotiate, does a line separating collusion from abuse ever exist?
In the end, like a lover who mourns a lost relationship, Zimroth exults that she would "live her connection to F all over again," and does not see her memoir as an attempt to "save some other little girl from a sadistic ballet master." Unable to envision an alternative value system, she concludes from her experience that "perhaps the rigor and discipline, the self-mortification and rhapsodic ambition that I experienced are exactly what a girl needs to become a 'great dancer,' Perhaps F was right all along, and it was I who failed in my vocation and not F who betrayed me." But she sells herself short. Rigor and discipline are possible without abuse and powerlessness, ambition is possible without self-mortification. There are other ways to love.
For most of us, the "femininity" that ballet exalts is hardly a model for anything, let alone our sex lives. Despite Zimroth's commendable message that it's OK for women to wear tutus or leather onstage (and in bed), we'd be wise to also think hard about the conditions and rules under which we choose these costumes (or, for that matter, choose them for our children). One thing is certain, after reading Zimroth's memoir, watching the "Nutcracker" will never be the same.
SALON | April 1, 1999
Tara Zahra is a fellow at the American Prospect.


T H E_.H O T_.S P O T Erotic wasteland By Susie Bright With bad sex at home and pseudosex on TV, America is one frustrated nation (03/05/99) R E C E N T L Y Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson By Gentry Lane Why is it taboo for women to date younger men? (03/25/99) Will the real Jeff Stryker please rise? By Jeff Stryker Jeff Stryker on Jeff Stryker: My doppelganger is a sex god (03/18/99) Enchanted forest By Reed Hearne A man takes us behind the tropical bushes into the land of gay cruising, where two worlds coexist without ever touching (03/11/99) Rub me tender By Jon Bowen A reformed frotteurist explores the roots of his long-lost fetish (03/04/99) Doctor's orders By Janelle Brown In the wake of a new Alabama law declaring vibrators illegal, a provocative new book, "The Technology of Orgasm," sheds light on the perversely puritanical evolution of the feminine joystick (02/25/99) - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Urge archives - - - - - - - - - -		FROM BALLET TO B&D AND S/M? \| PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - Zimroth, a National Jewish Book Award winner and poet, writes of that time in a young dancer's life when careers are made or broken. Subtitled "Memoir of a Young Girl and Her Ballet Master," the book begins with a disturbing vignette. Zimroth, in her adult life, was raped by a boyfriend (her first sexual experience). But a few pages later she changes course. It wasn't rape after all. "Did it hurt?" the boyfriend asked afterwards. "Yes," she answered. "Do you want it again?" he persisted. "Yes," she answered again. And apparently she remains convinced that she did want it, and that the experience was an allegory for her ballet training. If that's not enough to get your attention: She's not complaining. In fact, she considers the memoir an "elegy" to her ballet teacher, the man she refers to only as "F." Zimroth is on to something -- sensational yet obvious. The training of a serious dancer involves ceding control, being touched whether you like it or not, being seen whether you like it or not. "Junk off," our teachers would say, and that meant "strip, now." We would remove the plastic shorts and ripped T-shirts and leg warmers that served more as a protective shield than a way of getting warm and be exposed. Down to regulation pink and black, unforgiving, and after age 13 unflattering for most. I'd play with the skin on my neck between combinations because there was nothing else to fidget with. The only saving grace was not being a student at the studio across town, where weights went up on a chart on the wall each week, and you didn't perform the role if you didn't fit in the costume. It also meant wanting to be hurt. Misshapen and untalented dancers are simply ignored. So 13-year-old girls learn to take it as a compliment when the teacher, often male, grabs her leg and pushes it up to her ear, makes her repeat the combination until her muscles shake with exhaustion, pinches her arm so she remembers to hold it up, smacks the bottom of her heels so that they stay elevated. While we were corrected, we were to be passive, stare straight ahead and finish the combination, and allow our bodies to be "placed." At the basis of it all -- trust, devotion and passion, or so we were told. Sound familiar? Zimroth is brave in telling this story -- of how a value system that is stigmatized and labeled perverse in the outside world when enacted between two consenting adults is not only treated as normal but celebrated in the dance studio when the relationship occurs between a 13-year-old and a teacher who is three times her age. For Zimroth, there is a natural climax to the secret pact between teacher and student, the story that began this piece. But this vignette, F's order to strip naked and the deflowering that ensues, is actually the beginning of a three-page fantasy, events that would have taken place "if this were fiction." The imaginary encounter in her teacher's "secret" room is the closest we get to a physical consummation of her "collusion." Zimroth must resort to such fantasies, because her love affair is never really with F but with the ballet itself, and that's where the difference between her love and those in S/M relationships begins. In fact, F does not exist for Zimroth outside of his power to make her a dancer: "It never occurred to me to endow him with a life outside the studio and his secret room -- that is, a life away from me." It is ballet -- not F himself -- that transmits the values of domination and submission. She observes, "Ballet is a world in which 'normal' values are reversed: brutality is seen as a gift, fear as devotion, sadism as love." Zimroth acknowledges that her story is not unique. And while she qualifies her claims in her introduction by pleading with her children to understand that she writes only of the hothouse world of ballet, "not a paradigm for living," she simultaneously emphasizes that any female dancer "would immediately comprehend the nature of my relationship to F and could substitute her own F." In the end, she endorses balletic B&D-S/M with the admission of her own complicity: "Children can collude. I colluded. I loved him." Those who defend S/M relationships outside the dance world do so by appealing to the value of sexual freedom: They argue that consensual expressions of sexuality should not be limited to vanilla heterosexuality. But a necessary precondition for such exploration is the existence of options -- the option to submit or to dominate, the option to trade in an abusive or simply unhappy relationship for something better. In this context, the possibility for collusion exists (though whether or not it can exist for a 9- or 13-year-old is another issue entirely). In the dance world as Zimroth describes it, the choices are to love according to the rules or not to love at all. In such circumstances one must question whether collusion is possible, if the idea of collusion is more than a rationalization for mistreatment. Even Zimroth's portrayal of her own consent falters sometimes. F at one point punishes her for taking up smoking by ritualistically and deliberately striking her three times with a cane. Fair enough, argues Zimroth. "Daring begets pain; that was the deal. It was worth it." She relished that the ordeal was "private and forbidden, more secret and taboo than my childish attempt to smoke." But when F unexpectedly and ferociously strikes her a fourth time on her way out the door she feels betrayed. "THAT was not part of the bargain, not part of the deal, not part of the reciprocity of elegance and pain we had so perfectly enacted. It was entirely unfair, uncalled for and very, very painful." In this one moment in the book, Zimroth acknowledges the blurry line between collusion and abuse, and her lack of power to negotiate that line. But without such power to negotiate, does a line separating collusion from abuse ever exist? In the end, like a lover who mourns a lost relationship, Zimroth exults that she would "live her connection to F all over again," and does not see her memoir as an attempt to "save some other little girl from a sadistic ballet master." Unable to envision an alternative value system, she concludes from her experience that "perhaps the rigor and discipline, the self-mortification and rhapsodic ambition that I experienced are exactly what a girl needs to become a 'great dancer,' Perhaps F was right all along, and it was I who failed in my vocation and not F who betrayed me." But she sells herself short. Rigor and discipline are possible without abuse and powerlessness, ambition is possible without self-mortification. There are other ways to love. For most of us, the "femininity" that ballet exalts is hardly a model for anything, let alone our sex lives. Despite Zimroth's commendable message that it's OK for women to wear tutus or leather onstage (and in bed), we'd be wise to also think hard about the conditions and rules under which we choose these costumes (or, for that matter, choose them for our children). One thing is certain, after reading Zimroth's memoir, watching the "Nutcracker" will never be the same. SALON \| April 1, 1999 Tara Zahra is a fellow at the American Prospect.